


A Time To Die

by grayspider1974



Category: Vikings - Fandom
Genre: Alcoholism, Medieval Medicine, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-02 15:54:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 7,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10947783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grayspider1974/pseuds/grayspider1974
Summary: In which there is a time to be born, and a time to die.





	1. Chapter 1

"Kill me," Lagertha muttered as she walked up the gangplank. "Send me to Hell." The Seer had told her that one of her husband's children would kill her, but despite the fact that Aslaug's two eldest sons had demanded that she be hanged from one of her own gibbets (an opinion that had been echoed by a particularly loudmouthed farmer who was the father of the Ilsey Skallagrimsdottir whom she had hanged for desertion some time in November) her own son had stood firm in his decision to banish her once the ice had broken, and she had endured two months of seeing him shamble around Kattegat like an inebriated ghost. Sometimes, she could hear him and his second wife humping like a pair of moose in the next room, and understood why Aethelstan had hated the sound of her getting it on with Bjorn's father....but the nights when her son drank too much to get hard and bawled pitifully until dawn were much worse. "My son wails like a violated woman and won't look me in the eyes," Lagertha thought. "At least he HAS eyes." She remembered blood on the sauna floor and felt sick. "They never caught Ivar the Gimp after he and the Seer scuttled off with Astrid's baby. Some bloody saga this has turned out to be. I thought I'd won when I killed Aslaug, yet I only ruled as Queen for about a year. Frig, Odin, Thor...strike me down now because I don't want to live!" She glanced up at the sail of the Brotherly Love, which was to take her to Tir Manannan. They had the St. Andrew's Cross and Sacred Heart blazoned on them. "Shit....I'm in the hands of Aethelstan's God now...." Lagertha thought as Brother George took her by the elbow and helped her onto the deck. "The bastard god who forgives everybody!"

"Well, here it is," said Brother George a couple weeks later. "Home sweet Hell." He grinned broadly. "Lucas and I will watch over you and your monsterous regiment by turns, but don't ask either one of us to double-team you."  
"Why does everyone keep bringing tat up?" Lagertha asked. "It happened twenty years ago!"  
George merely grinned wider. "You're a Jezebel, but not the worst person I've ever met. My sisters were worse than you...of course, you're only human, and our mother was what you would call a goddess. Dread Badba Mor, Eater of Her Young. You think the Norse gods were bloodthirsty, but the Celtic ones were worse." George picked up a fragment of bone that might have been human and handed it to Lagertha. "Your son helped to get rid of them."  
"How?" Lagertha asked.  
Brother george glanced up at the ruins of what looked like a church near the top of the hill above the roofless cottages of Tir Manannan. "There are things he never told you about this place. Let it suffice to say that he's part of the reason why this place is deserted. But never mind that. Job One is to turn these hulks over so you ladies have a place to sleep until we can rebuild some of these cottages. and most of your friends are in a family way."  
"Kill me," Lagertha thought "Someone please kill me!"

For most of the brief summer, Lagertha's home was an overturned Caledonian whaler named Mother of Mercy that was remarkably snug even though it smelled a bit of dead whale and she had to share it with eleven other women, so they each had about as much space as they would have when the ship was afloat. Nex to Mercy lay Sweet Justice, Prosperity, and Dignity, and Brother George had a scow named Chastity all to himself, claiming that he liked his privacy and wished the Monsterous Regiment to molest him, given Lagetha's infamous attempt to lure Aethelstan into her bed.  
"why does everybody keep bringing that up, for Frig's sake?" she asked.  
"'Cos it's funny," said George. "He may have been an English wanker, but Aethelstan must have had brass balls to say no to you."  
"His cousin's got the balls in the family," said Lagertha. A small, furry shape scurried past, chattering. "If that's her damn pet monkey, then the Nasty Nun is here too."  
"She came up from Saint Benedict's this morning," said George "and half the Chastity is going to become a clinic for her to work out of. I offered her a bunk, but she said she prefers to doss in Sweet Justice with the other ladies."  
"You're lucky," said Lagertha. "she's more likely to molest you in the night than I would. Do you know what they call her?"  
George scratched his stubbled head, stretched and yawned. "The Bitch That Buggered Bjorn, right? I know your son's into peculiar shit. Sister Peg told me so herself.  
"Did she tell you what she and Ivar the Gimp did with Astrid's baby?" Lagertha asked. "Did it even live?"  
George regarded her gravely. "Yes. But don't ask too much about that. Ivar's a strange little bastard, but he's not as evil as you think, and he's smart and loyal.Peg says he and the Seer took Aino to a place that could be reached only by a ship with four legs and a hump." A sheep dashed by, bleating pitifully, with Nutmeg clinging to its wooly back.  
"'Scuse me," said George. "It seems we have a monkey on the lamb..." He ran after the sheep.  
Lagertha stared up into the cold, unfeeling sky. "Oh ye Gods!" she whispered. "Just kill me, already! Kill me! Kill me!"


	2. The Examination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Lagertha gets a medical examination for the first time in her life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The common gynecological speculum actually is a modified form of an instrument of torture.  
> Sheepgut condoms were known as far back as ancient Rome...however, they are not as effective as latex!

Sister Margurite looked remarkably like her cousin, but where Aethelstan had been meek and almost furtive in his ways, Sister Peg of Saint Benedict's on Cumberbach's cool and placid smile masked an icy rage that had earned her the nickname The Bitch That Buggered Bjorn. Her eyes were like dirty window panes as she looked the former Queen of Norway straight i the eyes and said "If you kill me, half of Clan Mackenzie and all of my relatives will be here within a week and you'll be up to your ears in Cumberlingas, and not the kind that you like.  
Lagertha glowered silently.  
"Take your trousers off, Ma'am," continued Sister Peg. "Bjorn said I should give you an exam."  
"I'm not letting you poke around my lady parts," said Lagertha. "And what in the Nine Hells is THAT?" She pointed at a metal device that Sister Peg had boiled and set out on a clean towel to cool. "It looks like an instrument of torture."  
"That's a Pear of Agony," said Sister Peg. "And technically speaking, it IS an instrument of torture. It's also useful for.....hmmn...opening things up during the type of examination Bjorn asked me to do on you."  
"You're a sick bitch!' said Lagertha. "You did unspeakable things to my son, and now you want to do them to me?"  
Sister Peg sighed. "Bjorn asked me to do this because he's afraid that whatever it was that made you barren might have been passed on to Astrid and then to him and his wife. He's terribly concerned about it..."  
"I heard them getting it on when I was back home," said Lagertha. "They didn't seem to have any problems except when he drank too much."  
"I gave them little sheaths made from sheep's intestines," said Sister Peg. "Technically speaking, they're a sin, but...." she shrugged "Everyone sins, and only God can forgive."  
"why do you Christians consider everything enjoyable a sin, and why do you even have the idea of sin if your God forgives everything?"  
"It's not that we consider everything enjoyable sinful," said Sister Peg "but eventually, they turn to shit. When that happens, we repent and are forgiven. I speak from personal experience. Now....trews off and knees up!" Sister peg's eyes went wide. "You're terrified, aren't you? You've never had any sort of medical examination in your life...and how old are you? My guess is you're forty-five..."  
"I'm forty-three," said Lagertha "and I have never been sick in my life!"  
"Are you going through menopause? By that I mean the thing that countrywomen refer to as The Change."  
"I dunno," Lagertha said. "I'm not getting hot flashes or anything like that...but I think I stopped having my monthlies some time after my last miscarriage, which was during the last French campaign....I never really bothered to keep track of them, see."  
"Well THAT should have told you something was wrong," said Sister Peg. "I myself have dysmenhorrea, so I really CAN'T ignore That Time of the Month. You on the other hand have amenhorrea, which is much worse."  
"Astrid never had monthlies at all, and it never bothered her" said Lagertha.  
"Astrid was a good twenty pounds under a healthy reproductive weight, which was another good reason to keep her off your son's pole" said Sister Peg.  
"You hate me," said Lagertha "and you think you're better than me."  
Sister Peg grinned tightly. "No I don't. I think you're an arrogant, selfish bitch who who hurt someone I love, but I don't hate you or think I'm better than you. Hatred is counterproductive, and a waste of time and energy."  
"I never hurt you cousin," said Lagertha. "It was Floki who killed him..." She took off her trousers, because ow she really was curious about what was happening "down there."  
Sister Peg's grin broadened, and she reached for the Pear of Agony. "I wasn't talking about Aethelstan, I was talking about your son. I know I did sick things to him, but what you and your bitches did....he weeps all night like a beaten whore, and that ain't pretty. Bellona doesn't know what to do with him when he's like that....oh my, I'm not sure what this is, but it feels like you've got a lump the size of my fist in your uterus." The Pear snapped shut and was withdrawn. "The Vedic doctors in Goa taught me about things like this. I'm going to have to consult with Lady Lou, because if this lump is cancerous, it will have to be removed."  
"What's cancer?" asked Lagertha. "Does it have anything to do with crabs?"  
"It's worse than crabs, said Sister Peg. "It's when part of your body starts to change shape and attack the rest of you. It's eventually fatal."  
"My minge is going to eat me," Lagertha thought as she sat with her knees drawn up to her chest, forcing her face into a stoic mask. "Dear gods, KILL ME!"


	3. Tir Manannan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a year passes on Tir Manannan as Sister Peg waits for the next ship to Constantinople

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Gaelic and in French, the word for "lighthouse" is "phare", derived from the Pharos of Alexandria which stood until it was destroyed by an earthquake in the 10th Century AD.  
> "Hvitachrist" or "white Christ" is an old Norse name for Christ.

Sister Peg stayed for the rest of the year as crops were reaped and babies were born with a truly remarkable absence of fatalities due to the fact that the nun knew her business, and the ruins that clustered around the harbour were cleared of rubbish and the cottages that were still standing were re-roofed with turf. There had once been a thriving community here that had been obliterated in a calamity whose exact nature Brother George was unwilling to talk about, but had involved Bjorn and the ruined church at the crest of the hill. This structure filled the entire Monsterous Regiment with a sick sense of unease, and none of the women would go near it, so after a quick trip back to Iona, Brother George returned with a party of workmen.  
"Try to maintain discipline within your ranks, Ma'am" he said. "These gentlemen all have wives and families of their own, and Father Mackenzie will have my ass for breakfast if there's any sort of inappropriate goings on."  
"They're a manky-looking bunch," said Lagertha.  
"That won't stop some of these women," said Brother George. "They haven't seen a man other than Yours Truly for three months."  
One of the shield wives sidled up to the workmen, her two-month-old infant latched firmly on her breast. "'Scuse me, Ma'am..." said Brother George "but inappropriate goings-on have already commenced." He charged up the hill on the war path against moral turpitude, and as he hauled the young stonemason away by the seat of his trousers, Lagertha returned to clearing away the rubble around one of the burnt cottages. She nearly sliced her fingers on a rusted harpoon that lay in the bracken. It looked like it had been lying there for at least a decade, as did the cleaver that lay nearby, and she found three teeth that were probably human. She looked up at the hill, where the ruined church had been levelled and the hillside stabilized to support the base of a tower-like structure that Brother George had called a "phare", but Lagertha had not understood his explanation of what it was, beyond the fact that they had one in Alexandria. "So what happened here?" she asked herself. "Bjorn was here, but what happened to him?" She realized that she missed her son more than she missed any of her husbands, or Astrid for that matter. She remembered painfully how Astrid had died...the blood seeping into the wooden benches in the sauna the weird, pale blind creature that Astrid had given birth to and the horrified look in her son's eyes. "I made my son weep like a beaten whore..." she thought "dear Gods I WANT TO DIE!"

The Stella Libertas arrived the next Spring to drop off Brother Lucas and take Brother George and Sister Peg to Byzantium. The crew also took on a load of wool, eiderdown and smoked puffin meat and unloaded supplies for the colony. "I'm gonna check on my family on the way over," said Sister Peg. "Your son loaned Uncle Maltiward some money to rebuild the Raging Cock, only he's gonna re-name it the Phoenix. After that....well, I hope there's a surgeon between here and Goa who can fix your problem, but bear with me. There's too damn much suffering in the world to not do what I must to alleviate it." She picked up Nutmeg and chucked him under his chin. "Buh-bye. Try to survive, eh!" Then she waddled up the gangplank.  
'Dear Gods," thought Lagertha "I, Lagertha the Brave, once Queen of Norway, must trust my life to a fat-assed nun who once did peculiar things to my son....Odin, Thor, Freya, Frig....please, please, my life is a burden to me!" She thought for a moment. "What the fuck...I'll even pray to the Hvitachrist if he'll get down off his cross long enough to listen to me! I WANT TO DIE!"


	4. Moonlight on the Mediterranean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sister Peg arrives in Constantinople

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As Christianity spread, it absorbed elements of various pagan religions, including the cult of Priapus, the Roman god of fertility and rebirth (who also gave his name to the medical condition known as "priapism")

Moonlight danced on the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, and a pod of what might be dolphins or porpoises trailed after the Stella Libertas as she hove into port. Their journey had been fairly uneventful because the Stella Libertas (like her sister ship in the Indian Ocean, the Stella Mort) dwarfed all other ships and was armed to the teeth, but the trip had taken 3 months because the Stella was not particularly fast.  
"Sweet Priapic Christ!" shouted Brother George as a rather large woman with a great deal of freckles crested the waves. "For pity's sake, Bellona, I'm a man of God!"  
"Ave, Georgos!" chirped Bellona, totally unconcerned that she was nude in front of two members of the Catholic clergy and an entire crew of sailors, many of whom had never seen a woman with red pubic hair before "et tua, Margurite!"  
"She likes to swim with the dolphins," Thorunn explained as she threw Bellona a rope ladder and the taller woman hauled herself onto the deck and towelled off "although it tends to further the legend that she's some sort of supernatural sea creature."  
"I guess the condoms didn't work too well," said Sister Peg. "And I regret to say that although your mother-in-law didn't have any sexually transmitted diseases, I could not give her an entirely clean bill of health."  
"Mama Lagertha, she sick?" asked Bellona.  
"She is sick," said Sister Peg "but it's best to discuss that with her son present."  
Bellona nodded "Me comprende!"  
"And how are you, Bellona?" asked Sister Peg.  
"I good....Bjorn not so good. He drink too much, cry all night, no fun in bed. Hvitserk, on t' other hand....that miserable homonucleus tried to..." She squeezed her own breasts. "I no wanna fuck him, so I beat him. He don' like that much. He idiot, no respect for women, an' he so small no wonder Meggie needs him and Bjorn's other dumbass brother to make her happy.  
"Meggie...?" asked Sister Margurite.  
"Little blonde thrall that Ubbe took as wife. She Magret, like you only without the 'grrr' in the middle.  
"I see..." said Sister Peg.  
"She got no respect for herself. Whores and slaves breed slaves and whores!" Bellona then looked at Thorunn and covered her mouth with her hand. "Mea culpa!" she said after a moment of awkward silence.  
"Tua absolvo," said Thorunn. "I'm not offended, because in many cases you're right. I love Bjorn, but both our lives would have been simpler if his parents had married him off before he started sleeping with the help."  
Bellona suddenly wrapped Thorunn in a dripping wet hug, and Brother George turned beet red and muttered "Lord Thundering Jesus..."  
"Impure thoughts?" Sister Peg chirped brightly.  
George nodded. "I've never seen so many freckles on one woman in my entire life..."

"This should teach you a valuable lesson," said Bjorn Ironside. "Never honk a lady's boobs."  
Hvitserk gritted his teeth as the welts on his backside were swabbed out with Four thieves Vinegar. "She spanked me with my own belt. It had studs on it...ow!"  
"I can see that they left a distinct pattern," said Sister Peg.  
"She called me a homonucleus!" said Hvitserk. "I'm not a homonucleus....I like women!"  
"She did not say that you liked men," said Bjorn "only that you were very small."  
"I'm not small, either...ow, that hurts more than the beating!"  
"suck it up, Princess," said Bjorn. "Did your mother never spank you?"  
"Only in the sauna," said Hvitserk. "Did your mother beat you?"  
"Not me, because I was a good boy....but she'd whip Father's ass, and Aethelstan too if he got in her way...but then she remarried, and her second husband beat her. She stabbed out his eyes at dinner for honking her boobs, so Bellona let you off comparatively easy."  
Hvitserk pulled up his trousers. "She is a bitch. What's her idea of not letting someone off easy?"  
"She's a distant relative of Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni," said Bjorn "who could best be described as a flaming bitch on wheels."  
Hvitserk groaned. "You like her because she reminds you of your mother!"  
"Yo!" said Bjorn. "At any rate, your mother erred in that she did not discipline you as she should have, and that she did not arrange a good marriage for you before you started sleeping with the help....and by the way, Bellona is NOT the help!"  
"I good, smart strong girl," said Bellona, who had finally put on a robe. "I have self respect. You need to go practice exogenesis," she added "go 'way an' not come back until you find nice girl for wife." She tugged on Bjorn's braid. "No more troubles!"  
"Bellona's got a point," said Bjorn. "Pack you shit together, Hvitserk. You're going on an extended booty call."


	5. So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sister Peg consults with Bjorn about his stress eating and alcoholism, and goes in search of a competent surgeon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The historical Bjorn Ironside tried to get an audience with the Pope, but was refused, whereupon he attacked Italy and was eventually had to be bought off.

"You're getting fat again," said Sister Margurite the next morning at breakfast. "I know you eat more when you're upset."  
Bjorn paused in the middle of eating his sardines on toast. "You just told me my mother may be dying," he said.  
"Bellona says you drink too much and it....fells your tree, and makes her very unhappy," Sister Peg continued. "Even if your own happiness is not important to you, her happiness should be."  
"What do you propose I do?" Bjorn asked.  
"Drink less....it's acceptable to have a glass of wine at supper, not a whole flagon. As for myself, I need to find a competent surgeon who is willing to travel to Caledonia."  
Bjorn scooped up some of the fishy mess and shoved it in his mouth. "You're not going to find one easily. These Gree doctors boast about their surgical skills, but half their patients die on the operating table, or shortly thereafter due to complications. It would take an act of Divine intervention to get one on a boat to Caledonia. Speaking of the Divine, I've applied for an audience with the Pope." There was dead silence for several seconds before Bjorn spoke again. "I figure that God's Emissary on Earth would be the best person to consult on how to atone for my sins, because even though I'm still not sure if Astrid was my half sister or a first cousin..." His beautiful blue eyes were round and sad. "I'm also a lecher, a drunk, a murderer, an avaricious pig, a shitty husband and a bad father. They say only God can forgive...."  
Sister Peg felt as though her jaw had dropped onto the table. "Floki would be pissed off!" she said at last.  
"He wouldn't," said Bjorn. "In fact, he suggested it right before he died. He didn't last long after Helga passed on, and because the City officials would not allow a proper cremation or ship burial and the Christian and Jewish graveyards wouldn't take an old pagan like Floki I had him buried at sea. They've had record hauls of sardines out by the point where I threw him in ever since."  
Sister Peg peered cautiously at the fish on her plate. "Good Heavens...." she thought. "Floki died, and he's been reincarnated as breakfast!"

The next stop on Sister Peg's agena was a red herring, because Louhi Sariola had gone with her niece Kyllikylli on some sort of mission whose nature she had not bothered to explain to anyone, least of all her neighbor, who (after squealing in terror and refusing to open the door to Sister Peg) eventually let her in and asked if she could take the remainder of Floki and Helga's possessions down to the local charity. "They didn't have much, but no legal heirs either," Vlad said. "I wouldn't get much if I sold it all anyway." He stroked a rather elegant fox-fur cape that Helga had brought all the way from Norway, but which had proved too warm for Byzantium's climate. "Maybe I could make some throw pillows out of this. One can never have too many throw pillows...."  
"Evidently, he's never seen Louhi's flat across the hall," thought Sister Peg, as she thanked Vlad the Impaled politely and left. A girl on a grey horse clattered past, with Harald and Halfdan trailing after her.  
"That must be Grand Imperial Princess Zoe and her new bodyguards," thought Sister Peg. "two of the biggest, roughest pug-uglies in Norway, and they can barely keep up with her," she continued "I hope Harald's infected piercing has cleared up..." Then she and Nutmeg were nearly flattened by a passing cart. She rolled, jumped to her feet and screamed "FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKER!" and flipped the driver of the wain a double bird.  
"Is that you, Peg" asked a familiar voice.  
"Dimitri!" A man nearly the size of Bjorn Ironside , with a face that would have been ugly even before Bjorn had bitten half of it off shambled out of an alley carrying something that squirmed inside a burlap sack. Is that you, you big ugly Lesbian?"  
"Yup. Fully armed and filthy. where have you been this last year?"  
"I've been on a frozen rock off the coast of Caledonia, delivering Bjorn's bastard progeny...about fifty of them, in fact." The sack started making pitiful noises. ""Is that Ivar in the sack?" Sister Peg asked."  
'Nope. Ivar was last here about a month ago, and then went back to the Rubh-al-Khali with Grandfather and little Aino. The scumball in the sack owes him money....in fact, the last time Ivar was here, he broke both of this dirtbag's legs, and would have broken his fingers as well if I had let him."  
"You got Ivar to RELENT?" asked Sister Pet. "He seems like a changed person."  
"Not when it comes to money. He said that if this asshole didn't pay up by the end of the month, I was to throw him in the Bosphorus."   
The man in the sack started to cry weakly.  
"He's a piece of shit, Margurite," said Dimitri. "He claims he's a surgeon, but he cuts babies out of their mother's womb. That's not just illegal and immoral, it's dangerous. Ten percent of his patients die."  
"That's still better than most surgeons in this city," said Sister Peg. "Even the legitimate ones."  
"Ivar wanted to break his fingers so he wouldn't kill any more babies." said Dimitri "He says that on behalf of all the grotesques, he likes living, and it's not fair to kill people before they've had a chance to live."  
"And some people need second chances, like the man you have in your sack" said Sister Peg. I can get Bjorn to pay off his debt, because Bjorn's mother needs a good surgeon who can work on women's lady parts. If this gentleman is agreeable to being shipped to Caledonia of course. We need to take him to Bjorn and get him out of that sack."  
"Ya hear that, Dr. Domus?" asked Dimitri. "This nice nun just offered to spare your life . I'd like to make one condition....after your debts are paid and you're sent to the land of the barbarous Britons STAY THERE AND DON'T COME BACK!" He fiddled with a small pot-metal Orthodox Cross that hung on a chain around his neck. "Jesus loves all little children, don't he?"

The Stella Libertas set sail again with two prisoners in chains. One was Dr. Domus, who turned out to be an annoying little man with a bad limp, and the other was Hvitserk. "Bjorn said to pack up and go," so drop me off in Alexandria. I want to see the Pyramids, the Sphinx, and the whole lot, and I once saw a troupe of dancers from Egypt perform. They were....lithe, and extremely agile. I liked them very much. Could you let me out of these chains, please? My nose itches, and my welts still hurt!"  
"You need to know what it is like to lose your liberty before you really appreciate it," said Bjorn. "I speak from personal experience!"   
As such, Hvitserk clanked miserably up the gangplank, and was not released from his bonds until the sun went down.


	6. The Awakening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Lagertha learns that Hell is not a place but a state of mind, and has an unexpected visitor

Six months passed on Tir Manannan. Lagertha had devoted her days to back-breaking toil, complicated by the presence of forty-odd infant grandchildren....sadly, they had lost a few to illness, and there was now a row of sad little graves on the hill above the colony. Grueling as the days were, the nights were worse, because she was lonely and desperately horning, but her other shield wives were not as obliging as Astrid had been, so she was left to fend for herself, so to speak. What made her uncomfortable doing so was the fact that sometimes her thoughts turned to her own son. "Maybe Ivar the Gimp was right....my love for Bjorn may have bordered on incest. I'll admit that he was better looking than his father." She willed herself to not think about her son's pale hair, his incredible blue eyes or the perfect alabaster skin he had had before he had been covered in tattooes. Astrid had said that she had found the things that Bjorn liked done to him in bed distasteful, but Lagertha could not get the mental image of the pair of them copulating out of her head. "I should never have let the two of them near each other," she thought. "and I should have killed that spotted Scottish slut that he's fucking now as soon as I laid eyes on her." She tried to imagine Astrid eating her minge, but Astrid's rather coarse hair suddenly became much softer and shinier, and then the figure she had imagined kneeling between her knees raised its head, and she saw Ivar's chill blue eyes and shit-eating grin.  
"Well, don't think it never crossed your mind, Ma'am. We all got our Daddy's eyes, after all....but look, here's Mumma!" Then he vanished, and Queen Aslaug stood at the end of Lagertha's bed, smiling thinly.  
"I'm proud of all my boys," she said. "Hullo, Lagertha....welcome to Hell!"  
"Fuck off!" Lagertha said. "You're dead. I killed you."  
"That's true," said Aslaug. "but part of me lives on inside your head."  
"Don't forget about the rest of us!" said Earl Sigvard, whose eyes she had gouged out at the dinner table years ago. He stood there weeping blood, but his grin was nearly as terrible as Ivar's had been. "You're stuck in Hell with all the people you fucked over to get power, yet you lost it all in the end, you stupid fucking whore."  
"I am NOT whore!" Lagertha yelled.  
"Yes you are," said Kalf, who stood at her elbow. "Both legally and morally speaking, a woman who uses sex for power or material gain is considered a whore. You gained your earldom on your back, Lagertha....and then you were fool enough to let another woman do the same thing to you." He gestured towards the corner of the room where Astrid had slumped silently. "Only she paid for her whoring with her life."  
"Astrid," said Lagertha "I missed you. Talk to me."   
Astrid raised her head and stared hatefully with eyes that were as intensely blue as Ragnar's and all of his sons, but said nothing.  
"She's learned a valuable lesson in this life," said Aslaug "that if you don't like cock you shouldn't fuck cock. Feh....you are a brainless bitch, Lagertha. You don't deserve a son like Bjorn...you don't even deserve a son like my Ivar." Ivar's nasty, grinning face re-appeared at the edge of the bed, and his mother leaned down and stroked his hair. "Go back to the Land of the Living, sweet boy!"  
"Buh-bye Mumma," said Ivar. "I'll always miss you." He vanished yet again.  
Aslaug sighed. I was hoping that he'd become a great godi someday, or maybe a skald, but instead he's a Buddhist loan shark. The Gods are laughing at me. They're not laughing at YOU though. They weep, and are disgusted by you. You might as well go get baptized like Ragnar did because Valhalla will never welcome you now...."  
"Fuck off!" Lagertha shouted. She was tangled in a rather heavy duvet, but managed to shake it off. "Shove the broomstick you rode in on up your twat and leave me alone!"  
"Ya need a loan? asked Kalf "Too bad Ivar's gone....of course the interest rates that he charges are murder!"  
Siigvard grinned. "She charged me both my eyes and an earldom for six years use of her minge. All she has to do to pay back the loan with interest is spread her legs..." He chortled. "Damn, I haven't laughed this hard since I was alive!"  
"You never loved me," Lagertha snapped. "You are incapable of love!"  
"Speak for yourself, bitch!" said her second husband. "And no, I never loved you. I loved your son in much the same way as you loved this little whore." He grabbed Astrid and kissed her, though she tried to pull away. "Mmmm!" said Sivard. "Her mouth tastes like your minge. At any rate, you sent your son away just when he was outgrowing the peach-fuzz phase. I may be a creep, but I'm not into little boys....or girls that look like little boys, for that matter...." He shoved Astrid away. "I always said I liked your tits, didn't I? Come here and let me squeeze them for old time's sake...."  
Lagertha screamed and bolted for the door. Outside lay the settlement and the harbour under a grey pre-dawn sky. The air was still, and the water in the bay looked like glass. There was someone wading in it....no, they were walking on TOP of the water! Indigo eyes gazed at her from a face that was constantly changing....one second it was a man, then a woman, an aged crone then a baby. The hair changed from black and curly to her son's butter-blond, to silver grey then Caledonian red, and the skin shifted from fair to olive, then black as a svart-alf, then the tawny colour of Ragnar's concubine Yidu. Scars creased the visitors face then disappeared, and a gold tooth suddenly appeared and vanished as an ornate earring dangled from the being's left earlobe, and fish darted beneath the visitor's feet.  
"Who are you?" asked Lagertha "are you a God?"  
"I am what I am," said the being, as its features suddenly changed to those of her late husband, his bald head gleaming in the dawning light. "I met Ragnar, and I met Bjorn. Did they not speak of me?"  
"N....n...no," said Lagertha. "I don't think they did!"  
"A shame," the visitor's indigo eyes were the only thing that did not resemble Ragnar Lothbrook. "Do you want to join your husband?" he asked. "If so, you must wake up. Ragnar is not in Valhalla or in Hell, for he is part of Me."  
"LORD THUNDERING JESUS!" Lagertha shrieked....a phrase that she had heard Brother Lucas use when he hit his thumb with a hammer.  
"If that is who you say I am," said the visitor who looked like Ragnar. "Call me Christ, call me Elijah, call me Buddha, call me Mohammad, call me whatever you want. I and the Father are one, and so are you. It is time to wake up. Are you ready?"  
"Yes....oh fuck it...YES!"  
"THEN WAKE UP!"

Lagertha woke up standing in the water at the break of dawn. Brother Lucas and some of the other women stood nearby.  
"You were sleepwalking," said Lucas. "I was just about to stop you from walking straight into the harbour."  
She looked at the Caledonian cleric's homely sunburned face. "I want you to baptize me," she said. "today. I now know that there is no place for me in Valhalla, and I want to be with Ragnar when I die." Off in the distance, the rising sun gleamed on the sails of a ship that was recognized as the Stella Libertas long before it sailed into port.


	7. Doctor Domus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sister Peg returns to Tir Manannan, and Hvitserk absconds with her pet.

Hvitserk whined about his fate for most of the trip to Egypt, but perked up as soon as he saw the Pharos looming over the Alexandria harbour, and practically skipped down the gang plank after Sister Peg handed him the rather large sum of money that his half-brother had provided for him, for evidently Hvitserk had decided to do as young sailors have always done when set loose in a major port with a considerable amount of cash.  
"He's gonna need the condoms I gave him," thought Sister Peg. "He's not Catholic, so for him it's not a sin, and Bjorn would turn me inside out if his half-brother came home with VD." It was not until they had left port that she realized that Hvitserk had taken Nutmeg as well. "Damn dirty apes, the pair of them!" she thought. "Well, the climate's more like Nutmeg's homeland than where I'm going....but I'm going to miss his furry little monkey face!" Her remaining companion, Doctor Gregorius Domus was a self-absorbed, whiny pain in the behind, and she had not met a man whose arse she wanted so much to ream with something like a nice, splintery belaying pin since her cousin Aethelstan. Bjorn...well....he had been incredibly pretty before he got those ridiculous tattooes and started getting porky..."  
"Get a grip on yourself," Peg muttered "You've seen women die terrible, painful deaths for what they think is love, so you know better..." Then another thought crossed her mind. "I hope Hvitserk remembers to feed and water Nutmeg and dispose of his poop. That poor, dumb hairy beast can barely take care of himself, let alone a small, defenseless monkey...."

"Land ho!" Thorunn said to the huddled lump who shared the captain's quarters with her. "You're stoned, aren't you?"  
"I'm in pain," said Sister Peg. "These cramps are a bitch. At least you know I'm not harbouring any impure thoughts about your husband!"  
"Yup!" said Thorunn. "It was weird when you confessed that first time in Goa. It wasn't any less weird when you did it again off the coast of Cornwall....in fact, you freaked out the entire crew with your confession. Half of them think you're a witch, and the other half want you to..." She made a rather crude gesture.  
"Damn...." said Sister Peg. "I must have been baked. Where are we?"  
"We're moored off Tir Manannan, and the crew are readying the landing craft."  
"Holy Trout," said Sister Peg as she rolled out of her bunk. ""I'm gonna need to eat something to absorb the effects of the ganja. Now, where did I put my bag of implements?" She tripped over it and fell. "On second thought, if I eat anything I'll probably puke it up again...."  
"Maybe we should wait an hour or so...." said Thorunn   
Sister Peg nodded. "I'll need some time to prepare my instruments as well!"

"I know you think I'm garbage," said Dr. Domus as he dumped a double handful of surgical tools into a large pot of boiling water. "But I served a need, you see. Those women down in the area by the dockyards and the race track, they got a hard life..."  
"I know," said Sister Peg. "Whores....sad, dumb bitches that don't have a choice but to peddle their asses. If they all bred, we'd be overrun with little bastards." She hefted a pair of forceps and snapped them. "Sin is sin, and only God can forgive. All the same, if Ivar had broken your fingers you wouldn't be here to redeem yourself. The peculiar thing is that the woman you're going to operate on killed his mother."  
"That's one of the reasons why I'm never going back to Constantinople," said Dr. Domus. "Which is probably a good thing, because I'd probably head straight for the race track and rack up another huge debt." He sighed "I started out as a veterinarian, but whore-doctoring paid better than horse-doctoring. And it's not their only option...I devised an effective contraceptive of my own, by severing the vessel that connects the testes to the phallus....at least it works on dogs, but so far no human man has opted for it....at any rate, I think our patient is ready, because she's consumed more usquae beatha than one would have thought possible for a woman her size, and is out cold."  
"Be careful," said Sister Peg. "she's an old Jezebel with even more blood on her hands than you, but she's still somebody's mother."  
"That's true of most of my patients," said Dr. Domus "at least it is potentially so." He set his jaw, and pulled back the curtains that surrounded the bed in the surgery set up in the overturned Chastity. "Good afternoon, Mrs. Lothbrook...." he said cheerfully, and set to work.


	8. Live And Let Die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sister Peg returns to Byzantium with tragic (but expected) news

The gold flakes fell from Hagia Sophia's dome like glimmering snow, dusting the back and shoulders of the man who lay on his stomach like a large ivory crucifix. His hair was almost as rich a gold as the flakes sticking to it, and the only sign that he lived was the slow rise and fall of his broad back.   
"He comes here to pray for his sick mother," said the Day Sacristan "and he's done so for most of six months, and then leaves in the morning. To tell the truth, I never thought these Northmen had mothers...I thought they calved off glaciers like icebergs."  
Sister Margurite trotted over and nudged Bjorn's foot. "Hey Behemoth," she said. "Wake up!"  
Bjorn moaned, opened his eyes, and got to his knees and shook like a wet dog, scattering flakes of gold leaf. "You're back, Peg! My mother...is she well?"  
"Um...." said Sister Peg, aware that Bjorn Ironside was capable of snapping her neck in a sudden rage. "No, Bjorn. She's dead. We did our best, and she survived the surgery but then sepsis set in. She wouldn't let me ease her passage as I did for Astrid, and she died raving in terrible pain a week after the operation. It was bad, Bjorn. Really, really bad."  
Bjorn's eyes were big, and blue and terribly sad, but he did not look angry. "I somehow knew this would happen. I prayed for her. So did Bellona, until she went into labour a month ago. She had trouble with this one, and Thorunn says she has the baby blues, so she's at home resting. I prayed for Bellona too after that."  
"You should have gone home with her," said Sister Peg.  
"That's what Ivar said," said Bjorn. "He scuttled in here a couple weeks ago , called me an irresponsible piece of shit and threatened to slither into Bellona's bed if I did not do it myself. I assume he was joking, but the Night Sacristan tried to chase him with a broom. Aino took umbrage at that, and bit the Night Sacristan on the ankle, and when he looked down at her little face he screamed 'The eyes! What happened to the child's EYES!' and then fainted when the Seer popped out from behind a pillar and said 'She's got MY eyes!" It seems Ivar is taking better care of Aino than I expected...and she's a little firecracker, all things considered." Bjorn stood and stretched, his joints emitting a distinct "POP!" as he did so. "But I asked about Mother. Did she have cancer?"  
""No," said Sister Margurite. "She had a growth, but it was something stranger than cancer."  
The Day Sacristan bustled in "The Zardalos family wedding is in an hour, and people need to come in here to get the church ready."  
Bjorn loomed over the smaller man. "I'll go," he said. I don't want to interfere with a big, fat Greek wedding, and I'm starting to get hungry...but what was it that Mother had?"  
"Well..." said Sister Peg. "Doctor Domus gave me this in case you would want to see it, but it's a little bit alarming." From some hidden pocket of her habit she pulled a small bundle wrapped in cloth. "He looked at this and swore he never wanted to go near another vagina again. He's gone and joined the monks on Iona."   
Bjorn unwrapped the bundle, which was about the size of his palm. He looked at it and recoiled. "Is this?"  
"It's what it looks like," said Sister Peg. "It's a calcified human fetus, though the exact gender is difficult to determine at this stage. It must have miscarried near the end of the first trimester, but calcified rather than being ejected."  
"Mother always wanted another child after Gyda died," said Bjorn. "Who do you think is the father?"  
Sister Margurite shrugged. "Who knows?" Your mother...."  
"I understand," said Bjorn. "All Mother ever wanted was love and respect, but people lost respect for her every time she opened her legs, and the only man she ever loved was Father. This must have been conceived after Kalf, because she lost Kalf's baby before the siege of Paris, and I saw it...a bloody mess that looked more like a dead kitten than a potential human being, and this is a little more fully formed." He wiped the tears from his eyes. "It might....I think Mother and Father might have reconciled their differences for one night after Paris?"He went off on his own after that, and she turned to the comfort of other women. In that case, she just couldn't resist Father, and in the end it killed her. The last child of Ragnar Lothbrook, the Wrath of God...and here he is. Hello, Little Brother!" He carefully re-wrapped the calcified fetus, and handed it back to Sister Peg. "I have no idea how to dispose of this, and it hurts to even look at it." He swayed. "I haven't eaten in days, Peg. Are you hungry?"   
"As long as it gets you out of here before the Zardalos family shows up," said Sister Peg. "You don't want to ruin some girl's wedding, and you've got your own wife to worry about....a wife with a LIVING infant, and they both need you."  
"A time to be born, a time to die..."said Bjorn as he shuffled towards the door "a time to sow and a time to reap...your cousin taught me that a long time ago, but I forgot the rest."  
"It's the third chapter of Ecclesiastes," said Sister Margurite. "My favorite part are verses 10 to 13....'I have seen the travail which God has given to the sons of men....he has made everything beautiful in his time, and set the world in his heart....no one can find out the work that God maketh from beginning to end. I know that there is no good in them but to rejoice and to do good...eat and drink and enjoy the good in life...HEY!"  
Bjorn had suddenly enveloped Sister Peg in a bone-crushing hug. "I told you I was hungry, didn't I? Let's go!"


End file.
